Toma nota.../Take note...

It’s important to know that antibiotics, pesticides, growth hormones and GMOs are allowed in the American food supply. There is conflicting information on the safety of these additives, so it’s important to sort through the information and make the choice that’s best for you and your family. Two growth hormones that you may have heard of are rBST and Ractopamine. Bovine somatotropin, or BST, is a protein hormone naturally produced in cattle. Monsanto developed a genetically engineered version, rBST, that came to market under the brand name Posilac in 1994.

The goal of rBST is to boost milk production, as a cow injected with it can make around 10 additional pounds of milk per day. There is evidence that human consumption of meat treated with rBST may lead to higher levels of the IGF-1 hormone (Insulin-like Growth Factor) in our bodies, which significantly increases the risk of colorectal, breast and prostate cancer. In addition, 80% of antibiotics used in the United States are fed to animals that are slaughtered for our consumption. This is contributing to increased antibiotic resistance and is creating a human health crisis.

Documents reveal how poultry firms systematically feed antibiotics to flocks

Pervasive use fuels concerns about impact on human health, emergence of resistant superbugs

Major U.S. poultry firms are administering antibiotics to their flocks far more pervasively than regulators realize, posing a potential risk to human health.

We usually write in Dp.net our own book reviews in our Books Section or ask friends of the causes for democracy and human rights to write them for us. This is not the case, but we do not want to miss for our readers such a good review of a great book. The review is quite revealing about so many hidden truths in the World financial avenues that they prompt us to get this book to find the inner truths about "a financial system in which survival is predicated on government connections" and about many other oversights prompted by a misguided "good will" such as the attempts to help the poor get houses and save them from "abusive" practices, with "consequences that will only be seen in the long-run (...) and those consequences will probably not be pretty". There is a recent tendency to chastise free markets, but this book give us another very plausible perspective.

It Wasn't Free Markets That Did It

by David Paul Deavel

Review of Infiltrated by Jay W. Richards (McGraw Hill Education, 2013) 299 pages; $25.00.

Six years have passed since the meltdown of markets in 2008. Like many things "we all know," the putative reasons for this meltdown have now passed into the national consciousness: greedy bankers, deregulation, and an unregulated market for derivatives, credit default swaps, and other complex financial instruments. Jay Richards' Infiltrated, released in the summer of 2013, is a very handy volume to give to people who are open to hearing an alternative explanation of the crisis.

That it needs to be put in the hands of those open to its message must be said. The dramatic dust jacket and the title are both a little too Ann-Coulter-like for giving to people not already inclined to its message. But Richards, a former Acton Institute staffer and current senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, has penned a book that will help those who read it explain how the accepted narrative is mistaken.

Richards assigns blame for the meltdown and, by extension, for the years of economic sluggishness that have followed to, as the subtitle has it, "the insiders and activists who are exploiting the financial crisis to control our lives and fortunes." 

Democracy International, established in June 2011, is a network of democracy initiatives that work on strengthening direct democracy and citizens’ participation at local, national and at transnational level. The aim is to realise tools and procedures that integrate the will of the people into political decision-making, including referenda on treaties, citizens’ initiatives and fair electoral systems. The Participatory Democracy Cultural Initiative, Inc., actively backs these DI's efforts and goals. Last Oct. 29 we published a Report titled "Direct Democracy in the USA" about the approaching mission to the United States of Cora Pfafferott and two other prominent  DI board members in a so called "Big River Democracy Tour" to study the democratic processes taking place in the elections held last Nov. 4. It is very interesting to see the impressions on this group of Europeans caused by the United States electoral practices, including the extensive use of direct democracy mechanisms.

SUPER SIZE DEMOCRACY?!

It's not just a cliché: In the United States everything is huge: The width of the streets, the portions of food and the vastness of the landscape. After travelling Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana from 3 to 9 November on the occasion of US Election Day 2014, we need to add a fourth point: Democracy at local and state level. This is the lesson we learn from Democracy International's study tour. This is an account of five episodes.

by Cora Pfafferott 

Long Ballot Papers  

For US election day 2014, the official ballot of County Jackson, Missouri asks voters to decide on 25 issues. Amongst those are the appointment of court judges and state auditors. Also, constitutional amendments proposed by the General Assembly or the people need to be decided upon. In general, 26 states have direct democracy at state level, 146 ballot measures in total are put to the people on 4 November 2014.

The Acton Institute, devoted to the study and promotion of "a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles", published a critical review of the recent Encyclical letter drafted by Pope Francis, an apostolic exhortation "to embark upon a new charter of evangelization" but with a lot of emphasys on "a Church which is poor and for the poor" and on social dialogue. The Acton Institute reaction refers to the Pope's denounciation of the current economic system as "unjust at its root", because "a new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual" that according to this exhortation derives from an "autonomy of the market" in which "financial speculation" and "widespread corruption" and "self-serving tax-evasion reign".

Acton Responds to ‘Evangelii Gaudium’

The Acton Institute has been flooded with media requests because of the 2013 Apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis. While "Evangelii Gaudium" primarily examined the role of evangelization in the world, the new Pope also wighted in on economic issues and the free market. Acton's primary criticism of the document, stated by research director Samuel Gregg in National Review, was that far too many unexamined economic assumptions had made their way into the text. One might assume from some of the Pope's comments that the role of the State's interest is benign or unbiased in the world in comparison to the free market.